8 ms·

My Time at MIT

181 points by rrampage 2y ago

bobosha 2y ago
Our time there overlapped—I was a student of TimBL from 2004 to 2006, researching the Semantic Web initiative. CSAIL was, and still is, a truly magical place. I had the privilege of working alongside some of the greatest minds of our time: David Karger, Manolis Kellis, Regina Barzilay, et al an incredible assembly of brilliance.
- Tetraslam 2y ago
  Huh. I suppose I should see if I can join Manolis Kellis' lab; I got invited to one of the salons he hosts at his house on the quantum basis of reality and it was really fun! He also demoed a tool his lab is building for genomics knowledge graphing, and I was struck by how incredibly well-designed and empirical the whole project was.
- losvedir 2y ago
  I was there around that time, too, as an undergrad doing a UROP with Karger. It was truly a wonderful time. That said, my favorite memory of the time is a little more low brow. One time I was waiting outside one of the single occupancy bathrooms in CSAIL for my turn to do my business. After a minute, who should come out but Tim Berners Lee himself. We carefully avoided looking at each other, as one does in this situation, and I went in and sat down. The seat was warm! I remember sitting there grinning like an idiot thinking that my cheeks were being comforted by the residual heat of those of the creator of the world wide web. Ah, MIT, what a magical place.
  - qzw 2y ago
    In a similar low brow vein, I once took a wizz next to RMS in the old LCS building. When we were washing hands he tried to talk me into contributing to OpenJDK because we had previously talk a bit about a Java project I was working on for my UROP. Karger's Randomized Algorithms class remains the only class I ever dropped at MIT. Still have PTSD from the psets for that class. Although I might have made it if it weren't for the fact that I was taking Compilers that semester, and 2 out of the 4 people in my group dropped the class. So my friend Dave and I basically had to do double the work for the final compiler implementation project.
sgt101 2y ago
>The way she worked with students was that she would dedicate herself solely on a student/paper for the duration of an entire week. That week, she would avoid thinking or listening other works/students, even when she wanted to participate. Now we hear of academics (with their names on the papers) denying that they had anything to do with the work published, and at the same time the total fraud of academics with their names on 20+ papers a year. Something has to give - and I think we all know what....
- boppo1 2y ago
  > and I think we all know what.... No, I haven’t got a clue.
  - sriram_malhar 2y ago
    I think GP's point is that academics who have 20+ papers are basically running a paper mill; there is no way they are participating meaningfully in the papers their names appear in
    - tom_ 2y ago
      But they don't say, so how can we tell? I'm not going to be vague with my comment: best thing to do in this sort of case is not to engage.
      - sgt101 2y ago
        The person says some of what I think much better than me: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2025/02/17/does-authorship-mean-anything-when-academic-papers-are-simply-citable-tokens/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2025/02/17/do... I am afraid that there is massive and systematic and harmful fraud in research: https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabrication-research-images-threatens-key-theory-alzheimers-disease https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabricatio... as only one example. There are many many others. Very little work in entire fields is actually valid. I think that the way that authorship is currently practiced has a lot to do with this fraud. Academics with ethics and goodwill can no longer effectively police the system. A large number of academics do not even want the system to be policed.
CartyBoston 2y ago
I did not go to MIT but spent my entire career in Boston startups and tech. It is impossible to overstate how influential CSAIL was (and is?) in addition to it sounding here like a wonderful place.
davnicwil 2y ago
> Why pretend to be smart and play it safe? True understanding is rare and hard-won, so why fake it until you are sure of it? Isn't it more advantageous to embrace your stupidity/ignorance and be underestimated? Found this beautifully-phrased gem in the conclusion. Be it in research or otherwise I'm sure so many can relate to this in their younger years.
- dcchuck 2y ago
  I agree! Real "Fear is the mind killer vibes"
monkfish328 2y ago
> When you approach work with humility and curiosity, you learn more and participate more fully. Good collaborators value these qualities. A beginner’s mind is an asset. Staying close to your authentic self helps you find your true calling. Love this.
- Me000 2y ago
  In my experience good collaboration is the best for the team but an absolute dagger for your career. If you collaborate people who pretend to contribute take over. Theirs a reason this guy is writing blogs
  - vintagedave 2y ago
    > Theirs a reason this guy is writing blogs They seem very successful: > I am a principal research scientist at MongoDB Research. Ex-AWS. On leave as a computer science and engineering professor at SUNY Buffalo.
    - dyauspitr 2y ago
      It’s a man. He seems very successful.
      - vintagedave 2y ago
        Thankyou for the correction, but the singular 'they' has been used in gender-unknown or gender-irrelevant cases for centuries. I was not aware this person was male -- but it did not matter to me. Ie, it matches both points. My personal feeling is using a more widely applicable pronoun is more respectful, in general, so I use 'they' frequently, especially referring to people I don't know and so where I don't know their identity. https://www.oed.com/discover/a-brief-history-of-singular-they https://www.oed.com/discover/a-brief-history-of-singular-the... is interesting reading.
  - arjonagelhout 2y ago
    My experience has been that in a healthy working environment, it’s clear who contributed what (I do make sure to communicate clearly what I achieve towards the team and above), and lifting the entire team up does not jeopardize one’s own position in that team. Maybe the key here is a good work / team culture? I can also imagine some places or contexts in which the work might be more invisible / harder to attribute to specific individuals.
tinyhouse 2y ago
One year is very short for a postdoc. I think the author is a bit unrealistic in what he wish he could've done differently.
soseng 2y ago
"I was young, naive, and plagued by impostor syndrome. I held back instead of exploring more, engaging more deeply, and seeking out more challenges. I allowed myself to be carried along by the current, rather than actively charting my own course. Youth is wasted on the young." This quote really captures how I felt during that time. I wasn't smart enough to get into MIT, but I spent a lot of time sitting in on the open lectures during 2004-2005. I remember meeting a few of their undergrads who wanted to start tech companies and always feeling like I didn't belong. And I may be misremembering things but it seemed like every pitch had to do with P2P. Also, the first time I walked past those Frank Gehry buildings, I was awestruck. I just stood there for maybe 10 minutes looking up and down.
- ghaff 2y ago
  There was a period when P2P was the latest hotness. Pat Gelsinger who was CTO of Intel at the time said something like, as I recall, P2P was going to be as big as the internet at an Intel Developer Forum keynote. Stata grew on me over time architecturally. Still not sure how practical they were, especially for the cost, and I've heard very mixed reviews from people working in them.
  - eirikbakke 2y ago
    Stata was a great building to take a walk in. I discovered new rooms, and new coffee machines, every few months, and even started making a Minecraft model of it (got only as far as the elevator shafts). The people in various "fish tank" sections of the building did not like the Frank Gehry style as much, due to the lack of privacy, water leaks, drafts, and such. But some of us were lucky to have offices in the one part of the building that had 90-degree corners and regular brick walls. We got the best of both worlds... a regular office with a door and a window, and the fun architectural madness right outside. One of the admins recalled an opening reception for the building in the Kiva conference room. "I call this the nauseatorium", she had remarked. A man in a black turtleneck had turned around, wine glass in hand: "There's a reason why I designed it like that..."
    - 2y ago
ilamont 2y ago
There are other places at MIT with a similar vibe. Media Lab springs to mind. I took a class co-taught by TBL called Linked Data Ventures (6.898). There was an effort to seed a Semantic Web startup ecosystem with project teams formed in the class. IIRC one of the groups did get funded and was eventually acquired, but not using Semantic Web/Linked Data. Regardless, it was an amazing experience having TBL review our little demo app.
- vrc 2y ago
  Locu. Acquired by GoDaddy. Morphed into a Yext competitor called GetFound.
- ghaff 2y ago
  I have mixed feelings about Media Lab. They were the cool thing at one point but, even with their expansion, they just don't seem to be much in the conversation any longer. That's not necessarily a bad thing--a lot of academic matters aren't--but they certainly aren't the focus of conversation they were at one point.
nadis 2y ago
There's sort of an interesting tension (not necessarily a contradiction though) in this piece between focus / prioritization and curiosity exploration. Both are valid, but I wonder how the author balances them today and how it's changed since their postdoc. E.g. on the great example set by Nancy Lynch: "The way she worked with students was that she would dedicate herself solely on a student/paper for the duration of an entire week. That week, she would avoid thinking or listening other works/students, even when she wanted to participate." Compared to their lessons learned: "Why pretend to be smart and play it safe? True understanding is rare and hard-won, so why claim it before you are sure of it? Isn't it more advantageous to embrace your stupidity/ignorance and be underestimated? In research and academia, success often goes not to the one who understands first, but to the one who understands best. Even when speed matters, the real advantage comes from the deep, foundational insights that lead there. When you approach work with humility and curiosity, you learn more and participate more fully. Good collaborators value these qualities. A beginner’s mind is an asset."
rutgersnj22 2y ago
I had exactly the same experience during my postdoc there.
fairity 2y ago
> Why pretend to be smart and play it safe? True understanding is rare and hard-won, so why claim it before you are sure of it? Isn't it more advantageous to embrace your stupidity/ignorance and be underestimated? I wish this were true, and I do think this mindset would be optimal if everyone adopted it. Unfortunately, real workplaces are filled with people who are confident and wrong. As a leader, if your intuition is more accurate than your peers and you care about objective success, it’s important to assert yourself.
eawgewag 2y ago
I spent my undergrad at MIT and I completely felt this way! I wish so dearly that I delayed my undergrad by at least a year and spent some time maturing. So many interesting and wonderful things I've missed out on from that place, simply because I was not mature enough to appreciate it. If my child wants to go to MIT, I would strongly advise them to take a gap year.
- rr808 2y ago
  > If my child wants to go to MIT, I would strongly advise them to take a gap year. Interesting. My daughter right now is HS junior. I'm struggling with trying to decide whether the top schools are worth it or send to the local in-state. I feel that for undergrad it really doesn't matter, but its hard to fight the mob mentality of our area.
  - eawgewag 2y ago
    Honest answer: as an MIT computer science grad, my life has been infinitely easier thanks to the label. But my time at MIT was very hard, and it is a difficult place for a young person to be. It really depends on the child. I don't recommend MIT in particular to just anyone. Not sure if this lack of recommendation affects other top schools -- I don't have personal, intimate experience with them.
    - rr808 2y ago
      Thanks for talking your experience! Honestly at this stage I hope she doesn't get in and we wont have to make the choice.
      - borski 2y ago
        I can echo the parent. I still remember my time at MIT like it was yesterday, and it helped me immensely in life, especially having grown up poor. But it was the people I met and the stuff I worked on with them, and the relationships that forged, that stuck. The classes were useful and interesting but I’m very glad I made them the “side quest,” so to speak, and made “do interesting stuff with interesting people” the main quest.
userabchn 2y ago
During my PhD at MIT my girlfriend asked me how I thought I would feel about those years in the future. I said relieved that it was over, as, although I loved everything about the place, I felt constant pressure. She knew me better than I knew myself, it seems, as it was obvious to her that I would in fact long to be able to return to that time. I'm sure part of the longing is just due to the fact that I was in my 20s, living in my own nice on-campus apartment, and was hopeful that I had a bright future. Many people probably have a longing to be 23 again for similar reasons. However I think that what makes the feeling especially strong for me is that being at MIT added a feeling of privilege to every day. It created a sense of fulfilment, that I had done everything right and had succeeded. I don't think I could bear to visit now. The smell of the Infinite Corridor, the tunnels, Vassar Street, the Eastman Court trees in Autumn, or a warm summer evening by the Charles, would bring back memories that would be overwhelming.
- ykonstant 2y ago
  >'m sure part of the longing is just due to the fact that I was in my 20s, living in my own nice on-campus apartment, and was hopeful that I had a bright future. Many people probably have a longing to be 23 again for similar reasons. However I think that what makes the feeling especially strong for me is that being at MIT added a feeling of privilege to every day. It created a sense of fulfillment, that I had done everything right and had succeeded. I feel literally the same about my 20s (not at MIT, but thereabouts).
  - lumost 2y ago
    It's the same reason why replaying the start of a video game feels satisfying. > hopeful that I had a bright future Life is full of choices—some small, like how to spend a day, and some large, like where to live or work. In youth, options feel endless, and many decisions are reversible. But as time passes, choices accumulate, obligations set in, and the future becomes more constrained. At some point, we realize that paths we once considered are now closed —backpacking across Europe in your 20s, starting a family before 60, or pursuing a dream we always deferred. The surplus of time and energy fades, and life starts to become... predictable. That's why the fantasy is alluring. It lets us revisit a time when anything felt possible.
neilv 2y ago
> Eric Demaine was on the same floor too. Once, I accidentally sent a long print job (a PhD thesis) to his office printer, and he was angry because of the wasted paper. Because those sheets of paper could've been origami instead? :)
dazzaji 2y ago
I started my affiliation with MIT in 1997 as a lecturer on eCommerce Architecture—a topic that felt both exciting and exotic back then, as the internet was just beginning to transform the world. Walking through those doors for the first time, I was immediately struck by the brilliance of the people around me. Virtually everyone I met seemed like the smartest person I’d ever encountered, and I couldn’t help but feel like an imposter at times. But that feeling also came with the thrill of being part of a community that constantly challenged and elevated me. In 2007, I moved over to the Media Lab to focus on computational law, a field that thrives on MIT’s interdisciplinary ethos. Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with CSAIL researchers from time to time. These experiences were always a blast—not just because of the cutting-edge research, but also because navigating the Frank Gehry-designed Stata Center was its own adventure. I loved spelunking through its quirky passageways, stumbling across obscure treasures like tucked-away whiteboards filled with half-finished equations or discovering yet another coffee machine in a corner I hadn’t visited before. Since the pandemic, I’ve been living back in the Bay Area, so much of my MIT involvement is now remote. Yet even from a distance, I remain in awe of the people, ideas, and unrelenting creativity that define the Institute. Reading this reflection brought back so many memories—and a wave of nostalgia. It’s inspiring to see how others have experienced their time at MIT, and it makes me want to book a visit back to the campus just to soak it all in again. There’s something about MIT that stays with you, no matter how far away you are.
anal_reactor 2y ago
I do feel nostalgic about my college, but realistically, I'd never be able to do it all over again. Once I looked at two pics of myself: full afro before college, and almost completely bald after college, and I immediately felt that this is the right way to describe that time. But I have to say that I do miss interacting with people much smarter than myself. And the general atmosphere that great things await. I think it was very challenging time, but the belief in bright future allowed to push through. Now that I'm stuck in a pointless corporate job and it's dawning upon me that "this is it" and most of my life aspirations are not coming true, I can't help but feel helplessly pointless.
- kridsdale1 2y ago
  I don’t know what pointless corporation you’re in, but when I got in to Google at age 37 it did in several ways feel like college again, with the obvious geniuses and ‘we can do anything, if they don’t lay us off first’ vibe. Maybe you can change companies?
- xpe 2y ago
  We construct meaning, one way or the other. From one point of view, we are grains of sand to the universe. From another, we are friends, family, colleagues, and more. I know what it is like to not achieve what you want in the timeframe you want. But with effort you can renegotiate what matters most and adjust your aim.
  - anal_reactor 2y ago
    You're right, but there are some things that are difficult to accept. Some dreams that hurt when they don't get to come true.
swayvil 2y ago
I feel similarly about my time at art school. (It's the people. There is a deep humility in artists. A tolerance for uncertainty. A respect for mystery. It's rare.) My naive self could have gotten more out of it.
1024core 2y ago
Link seems to point to something else. Actual link: https://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2025/02/my-time-at-mit.html https://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2025/02/my-time-at-mit.htm...
naet 2y ago
I long for a space like this that I could spend some drop-in time at now (in my thirties and not looking to attend another full college degree program). If I could do one thing to reorganize society it would be to create a bunch of places like this with rich cultures of learning and collaboration that anyone could drop in on. There was a decent technology meetup culture in the bay area pre-covid, but so many of the groups I enjoyed stopped around that time and never started back up again.
kaveh808 2y ago
I wrote a blog about some of my experiences at the then-new MIT Media Lab in 1985. Unlike the experience of the author, I was more of a lone late-night hacker (in the old sense of the word). Thread starts here: https://kaveh808.medium.com/from-arcmac-to-the-media-lab-22949fb51935 https://kaveh808.medium.com/from-arcmac-to-the-media-lab-229...

181 points by rrampage 2y ago

Our time there overlapped—I was a student of TimBL from 2004 to 2006, researching the Semantic Web initiative. CSAIL was, and still is, a truly magical place. I had the privilege of working alongside some of the greatest minds of our time: David Karger, Manolis Kellis, Regina Barzilay, et al an incredible assembly of brilliance.

Tetraslam 2y ago
Huh. I suppose I should see if I can join Manolis Kellis' lab; I got invited to one of the salons he hosts at his house on the quantum basis of reality and it was really fun! He also demoed a tool his lab is building for genomics knowledge graphing, and I was struck by how incredibly well-designed and empirical the whole project was.
losvedir 2y ago
I was there around that time, too, as an undergrad doing a UROP with Karger. It was truly a wonderful time. That said, my favorite memory of the time is a little more low brow. One time I was waiting outside one of the single occupancy bathrooms in CSAIL for my turn to do my business. After a minute, who should come out but Tim Berners Lee himself. We carefully avoided looking at each other, as one does in this situation, and I went in and sat down. The seat was warm! I remember sitting there grinning like an idiot thinking that my cheeks were being comforted by the residual heat of those of the creator of the world wide web. Ah, MIT, what a magical place.
- qzw 2y ago
  In a similar low brow vein, I once took a wizz next to RMS in the old LCS building. When we were washing hands he tried to talk me into contributing to OpenJDK because we had previously talk a bit about a Java project I was working on for my UROP. Karger's Randomized Algorithms class remains the only class I ever dropped at MIT. Still have PTSD from the psets for that class. Although I might have made it if it weren't for the fact that I was taking Compilers that semester, and 2 out of the 4 people in my group dropped the class. So my friend Dave and I basically had to do double the work for the final compiler implementation project.

sgt101 2y ago

>The way she worked with students was that she would dedicate herself solely on a student/paper for the duration of an entire week. That week, she would avoid thinking or listening other works/students, even when she wanted to participate. Now we hear of academics (with their names on the papers) denying that they had anything to do with the work published, and at the same time the total fraud of academics with their names on 20+ papers a year. Something has to give - and I think we all know what....

boppo1 2y ago
> and I think we all know what.... No, I haven’t got a clue.
- sriram_malhar 2y ago
  I think GP's point is that academics who have 20+ papers are basically running a paper mill; there is no way they are participating meaningfully in the papers their names appear in
  - tom_ 2y ago
    But they don't say, so how can we tell? I'm not going to be vague with my comment: best thing to do in this sort of case is not to engage.
    - sgt101 2y ago
      The person says some of what I think much better than me: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2025/02/17/does-authorship-mean-anything-when-academic-papers-are-simply-citable-tokens/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2025/02/17/do... I am afraid that there is massive and systematic and harmful fraud in research: https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabrication-research-images-threatens-key-theory-alzheimers-disease https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabricatio... as only one example. There are many many others. Very little work in entire fields is actually valid. I think that the way that authorship is currently practiced has a lot to do with this fraud. Academics with ethics and goodwill can no longer effectively police the system. A large number of academics do not even want the system to be policed.

CartyBoston 2y ago

I did not go to MIT but spent my entire career in Boston startups and tech. It is impossible to overstate how influential CSAIL was (and is?) in addition to it sounding here like a wonderful place.

davnicwil 2y ago

> Why pretend to be smart and play it safe? True understanding is rare and hard-won, so why fake it until you are sure of it? Isn't it more advantageous to embrace your stupidity/ignorance and be underestimated? Found this beautifully-phrased gem in the conclusion. Be it in research or otherwise I'm sure so many can relate to this in their younger years.

dcchuck 2y ago
I agree! Real "Fear is the mind killer vibes"

monkfish328 2y ago

> When you approach work with humility and curiosity, you learn more and participate more fully. Good collaborators value these qualities. A beginner’s mind is an asset. Staying close to your authentic self helps you find your true calling. Love this.

Me000 2y ago
In my experience good collaboration is the best for the team but an absolute dagger for your career. If you collaborate people who pretend to contribute take over. Theirs a reason this guy is writing blogs
- vintagedave 2y ago
  > Theirs a reason this guy is writing blogs They seem very successful: > I am a principal research scientist at MongoDB Research. Ex-AWS. On leave as a computer science and engineering professor at SUNY Buffalo.
  - dyauspitr 2y ago
    It’s a man. He seems very successful.
    - vintagedave 2y ago
      Thankyou for the correction, but the singular 'they' has been used in gender-unknown or gender-irrelevant cases for centuries. I was not aware this person was male -- but it did not matter to me. Ie, it matches both points. My personal feeling is using a more widely applicable pronoun is more respectful, in general, so I use 'they' frequently, especially referring to people I don't know and so where I don't know their identity. https://www.oed.com/discover/a-brief-history-of-singular-they https://www.oed.com/discover/a-brief-history-of-singular-the... is interesting reading.
- arjonagelhout 2y ago
  My experience has been that in a healthy working environment, it’s clear who contributed what (I do make sure to communicate clearly what I achieve towards the team and above), and lifting the entire team up does not jeopardize one’s own position in that team. Maybe the key here is a good work / team culture? I can also imagine some places or contexts in which the work might be more invisible / harder to attribute to specific individuals.

tinyhouse 2y ago

One year is very short for a postdoc. I think the author is a bit unrealistic in what he wish he could've done differently.

soseng 2y ago

"I was young, naive, and plagued by impostor syndrome. I held back instead of exploring more, engaging more deeply, and seeking out more challenges. I allowed myself to be carried along by the current, rather than actively charting my own course. Youth is wasted on the young." This quote really captures how I felt during that time. I wasn't smart enough to get into MIT, but I spent a lot of time sitting in on the open lectures during 2004-2005. I remember meeting a few of their undergrads who wanted to start tech companies and always feeling like I didn't belong. And I may be misremembering things but it seemed like every pitch had to do with P2P. Also, the first time I walked past those Frank Gehry buildings, I was awestruck. I just stood there for maybe 10 minutes looking up and down.

ghaff 2y ago
There was a period when P2P was the latest hotness. Pat Gelsinger who was CTO of Intel at the time said something like, as I recall, P2P was going to be as big as the internet at an Intel Developer Forum keynote. Stata grew on me over time architecturally. Still not sure how practical they were, especially for the cost, and I've heard very mixed reviews from people working in them.
- eirikbakke 2y ago
  Stata was a great building to take a walk in. I discovered new rooms, and new coffee machines, every few months, and even started making a Minecraft model of it (got only as far as the elevator shafts). The people in various "fish tank" sections of the building did not like the Frank Gehry style as much, due to the lack of privacy, water leaks, drafts, and such. But some of us were lucky to have offices in the one part of the building that had 90-degree corners and regular brick walls. We got the best of both worlds... a regular office with a door and a window, and the fun architectural madness right outside. One of the admins recalled an opening reception for the building in the Kiva conference room. "I call this the nauseatorium", she had remarked. A man in a black turtleneck had turned around, wine glass in hand: "There's a reason why I designed it like that..."
  - 2y ago

ilamont 2y ago

There are other places at MIT with a similar vibe. Media Lab springs to mind. I took a class co-taught by TBL called Linked Data Ventures (6.898). There was an effort to seed a Semantic Web startup ecosystem with project teams formed in the class. IIRC one of the groups did get funded and was eventually acquired, but not using Semantic Web/Linked Data. Regardless, it was an amazing experience having TBL review our little demo app.

vrc 2y ago
Locu. Acquired by GoDaddy. Morphed into a Yext competitor called GetFound.
ghaff 2y ago
I have mixed feelings about Media Lab. They were the cool thing at one point but, even with their expansion, they just don't seem to be much in the conversation any longer. That's not necessarily a bad thing--a lot of academic matters aren't--but they certainly aren't the focus of conversation they were at one point.

nadis 2y ago

There's sort of an interesting tension (not necessarily a contradiction though) in this piece between focus / prioritization and curiosity exploration. Both are valid, but I wonder how the author balances them today and how it's changed since their postdoc. E.g. on the great example set by Nancy Lynch: "The way she worked with students was that she would dedicate herself solely on a student/paper for the duration of an entire week. That week, she would avoid thinking or listening other works/students, even when she wanted to participate." Compared to their lessons learned: "Why pretend to be smart and play it safe? True understanding is rare and hard-won, so why claim it before you are sure of it? Isn't it more advantageous to embrace your stupidity/ignorance and be underestimated? In research and academia, success often goes not to the one who understands first, but to the one who understands best. Even when speed matters, the real advantage comes from the deep, foundational insights that lead there. When you approach work with humility and curiosity, you learn more and participate more fully. Good collaborators value these qualities. A beginner’s mind is an asset."

rutgersnj22 2y ago

I had exactly the same experience during my postdoc there.

fairity 2y ago

> Why pretend to be smart and play it safe? True understanding is rare and hard-won, so why claim it before you are sure of it? Isn't it more advantageous to embrace your stupidity/ignorance and be underestimated? I wish this were true, and I do think this mindset would be optimal if everyone adopted it. Unfortunately, real workplaces are filled with people who are confident and wrong. As a leader, if your intuition is more accurate than your peers and you care about objective success, it’s important to assert yourself.

eawgewag 2y ago

I spent my undergrad at MIT and I completely felt this way! I wish so dearly that I delayed my undergrad by at least a year and spent some time maturing. So many interesting and wonderful things I've missed out on from that place, simply because I was not mature enough to appreciate it. If my child wants to go to MIT, I would strongly advise them to take a gap year.

rr808 2y ago
> If my child wants to go to MIT, I would strongly advise them to take a gap year. Interesting. My daughter right now is HS junior. I'm struggling with trying to decide whether the top schools are worth it or send to the local in-state. I feel that for undergrad it really doesn't matter, but its hard to fight the mob mentality of our area.
- eawgewag 2y ago
  Honest answer: as an MIT computer science grad, my life has been infinitely easier thanks to the label. But my time at MIT was very hard, and it is a difficult place for a young person to be. It really depends on the child. I don't recommend MIT in particular to just anyone. Not sure if this lack of recommendation affects other top schools -- I don't have personal, intimate experience with them.
  - rr808 2y ago
    Thanks for talking your experience! Honestly at this stage I hope she doesn't get in and we wont have to make the choice.
    - borski 2y ago
      I can echo the parent. I still remember my time at MIT like it was yesterday, and it helped me immensely in life, especially having grown up poor. But it was the people I met and the stuff I worked on with them, and the relationships that forged, that stuck. The classes were useful and interesting but I’m very glad I made them the “side quest,” so to speak, and made “do interesting stuff with interesting people” the main quest.

userabchn 2y ago

During my PhD at MIT my girlfriend asked me how I thought I would feel about those years in the future. I said relieved that it was over, as, although I loved everything about the place, I felt constant pressure. She knew me better than I knew myself, it seems, as it was obvious to her that I would in fact long to be able to return to that time. I'm sure part of the longing is just due to the fact that I was in my 20s, living in my own nice on-campus apartment, and was hopeful that I had a bright future. Many people probably have a longing to be 23 again for similar reasons. However I think that what makes the feeling especially strong for me is that being at MIT added a feeling of privilege to every day. It created a sense of fulfilment, that I had done everything right and had succeeded. I don't think I could bear to visit now. The smell of the Infinite Corridor, the tunnels, Vassar Street, the Eastman Court trees in Autumn, or a warm summer evening by the Charles, would bring back memories that would be overwhelming.

ykonstant 2y ago
>'m sure part of the longing is just due to the fact that I was in my 20s, living in my own nice on-campus apartment, and was hopeful that I had a bright future. Many people probably have a longing to be 23 again for similar reasons. However I think that what makes the feeling especially strong for me is that being at MIT added a feeling of privilege to every day. It created a sense of fulfillment, that I had done everything right and had succeeded. I feel literally the same about my 20s (not at MIT, but thereabouts).
- lumost 2y ago
  It's the same reason why replaying the start of a video game feels satisfying. > hopeful that I had a bright future Life is full of choices—some small, like how to spend a day, and some large, like where to live or work. In youth, options feel endless, and many decisions are reversible. But as time passes, choices accumulate, obligations set in, and the future becomes more constrained. At some point, we realize that paths we once considered are now closed —backpacking across Europe in your 20s, starting a family before 60, or pursuing a dream we always deferred. The surplus of time and energy fades, and life starts to become... predictable. That's why the fantasy is alluring. It lets us revisit a time when anything felt possible.

neilv 2y ago

> Eric Demaine was on the same floor too. Once, I accidentally sent a long print job (a PhD thesis) to his office printer, and he was angry because of the wasted paper. Because those sheets of paper could've been origami instead? :)

dazzaji 2y ago

I started my affiliation with MIT in 1997 as a lecturer on eCommerce Architecture—a topic that felt both exciting and exotic back then, as the internet was just beginning to transform the world. Walking through those doors for the first time, I was immediately struck by the brilliance of the people around me. Virtually everyone I met seemed like the smartest person I’d ever encountered, and I couldn’t help but feel like an imposter at times. But that feeling also came with the thrill of being part of a community that constantly challenged and elevated me. In 2007, I moved over to the Media Lab to focus on computational law, a field that thrives on MIT’s interdisciplinary ethos. Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with CSAIL researchers from time to time. These experiences were always a blast—not just because of the cutting-edge research, but also because navigating the Frank Gehry-designed Stata Center was its own adventure. I loved spelunking through its quirky passageways, stumbling across obscure treasures like tucked-away whiteboards filled with half-finished equations or discovering yet another coffee machine in a corner I hadn’t visited before. Since the pandemic, I’ve been living back in the Bay Area, so much of my MIT involvement is now remote. Yet even from a distance, I remain in awe of the people, ideas, and unrelenting creativity that define the Institute. Reading this reflection brought back so many memories—and a wave of nostalgia. It’s inspiring to see how others have experienced their time at MIT, and it makes me want to book a visit back to the campus just to soak it all in again. There’s something about MIT that stays with you, no matter how far away you are.

anal_reactor 2y ago

I do feel nostalgic about my college, but realistically, I'd never be able to do it all over again. Once I looked at two pics of myself: full afro before college, and almost completely bald after college, and I immediately felt that this is the right way to describe that time. But I have to say that I do miss interacting with people much smarter than myself. And the general atmosphere that great things await. I think it was very challenging time, but the belief in bright future allowed to push through. Now that I'm stuck in a pointless corporate job and it's dawning upon me that "this is it" and most of my life aspirations are not coming true, I can't help but feel helplessly pointless.

kridsdale1 2y ago
I don’t know what pointless corporation you’re in, but when I got in to Google at age 37 it did in several ways feel like college again, with the obvious geniuses and ‘we can do anything, if they don’t lay us off first’ vibe. Maybe you can change companies?
xpe 2y ago
We construct meaning, one way or the other. From one point of view, we are grains of sand to the universe. From another, we are friends, family, colleagues, and more. I know what it is like to not achieve what you want in the timeframe you want. But with effort you can renegotiate what matters most and adjust your aim.
- anal_reactor 2y ago
  You're right, but there are some things that are difficult to accept. Some dreams that hurt when they don't get to come true.

swayvil 2y ago

I feel similarly about my time at art school. (It's the people. There is a deep humility in artists. A tolerance for uncertainty. A respect for mystery. It's rare.) My naive self could have gotten more out of it.

1024core 2y ago

Link seems to point to something else. Actual link: https://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2025/02/my-time-at-mit.html https://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2025/02/my-time-at-mit.htm...

naet 2y ago

I long for a space like this that I could spend some drop-in time at now (in my thirties and not looking to attend another full college degree program). If I could do one thing to reorganize society it would be to create a bunch of places like this with rich cultures of learning and collaboration that anyone could drop in on. There was a decent technology meetup culture in the bay area pre-covid, but so many of the groups I enjoyed stopped around that time and never started back up again.

kaveh808 2y ago

I wrote a blog about some of my experiences at the then-new MIT Media Lab in 1985. Unlike the experience of the author, I was more of a lone late-night hacker (in the old sense of the word). Thread starts here: https://kaveh808.medium.com/from-arcmac-to-the-media-lab-22949fb51935 https://kaveh808.medium.com/from-arcmac-to-the-media-lab-229...